


It Is Not Love, and Other Lies

by seductiveturnip



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Mental Instability, Non-Linear Narrative, Poetry, winterwitch - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-07-22 11:49:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7437027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seductiveturnip/pseuds/seductiveturnip
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They learn the language of each other’s nightmares {he trembles, screams out; she lies still but claws desperately at the sheets} about weaponized children who never run fast enough.<br/>They never run fast enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Is Not Love, and Other Lies

They are both weapons, malfunctioning in human form: love is not a concept they have the programming to register. They do not recognize touch without violence, skin without blood, too afraid to speak in their own mother tongues {English for him, Sokovian for her, so sometimes they swap}. She recites e.e cummings, and his hand {the metal one} twitches. He can say the next line { _“and what I want to know is/how do you like your blue-eyed boy, mister death?}_. Poetry – something he didn’t realize he still had.

{she’s quite poetic as well, but she doesn’t count.}

It is not love.

It is not love when she grasps his hand in battle, so hard it draws blood {not like he can feel it}. It most certainly is not love when he shoves her away { _“I will not die for you.”_ } There’s a fierceness there, but that’s just because he recognizes his own monstrosity in her. The same emptiness, the same black hole of where some semblance of humanity should be. Never love. They’re not capable of love.

It is definitely not love when they train all night, running from sleep and the terror it brings as fast as their legs may carry them, or when they succumb and decide to sleep in three-hour rotations. They learn the language of each other’s nightmares {he trembles, screams out; she lies still but claws desperately at the sheets} about weaponized children who never run fast enough.  
  
They never run fast enough. 

It is not love when lips {split, bruised lips} are pressed together so violently her teeth punctures and bleeds through. It is not love when there is a yearning so terrible, so painful, so unspeakable. It is not love when he feels like he’s falling off the train all over again, killing him and bringing him back to life all at once, and it feels wrong and terrifying and it’s so cold he could swear he’s burning. It is not love when he leans down to shove her away.

It is not love when all he can see is _redredred._

{She is red. Red eyes, red smile, pretty, gnawed red heart}

It is not love when they stalk the streets like machines on autopilot – assets without orders. They check the alleys, watch the homeless, wait for the sun to rise and scorch them. It is not love when he sees how she flinches at her own shadow, and so he proceeds to punch out the streetlight. She is reminded she is not alone, says something suddenly just to fill the silence. { _“It’s my birthday, don’t tell anyone.”_ }

It is not love when they share another poisonous kiss, just as murderously perfect as the last.

It is not love when she begins to weep in front of him, becoming unmade in his hands. He drops the pieces of her on the concrete ground, appalled, and she just continues to cry. He runs from her.

{But even though she does not follow, it seems he cannot outrun her}.

It is not love when he says nothing but sits alert at night at the doorway of her room, waiting, even though she has been missing in action for weeks. It is not love when he asks Fury to get a mission the day she is found and set to be brought back. It is not love when he disappears. When he doesn’t want to see her. It is never love. Love is for humans. And they cannot call themselves that anymore.

It is most certainly not love but it is not just two machines tuned in to one another but-

{I have seen your eyes before, the palest shadow in my nightmares, secret smile like you were apologizing, ‘forgive me, I love you’}

Maybe in another lifetime, it could have been. But maybe in another lifetime, Bucky Barnes comes home from the war and dies an old man and Wanda Maximoff is blown apart by a Stark Industries bomb, aged ten, a century later.

{But this is the lifetime we have been given and that is just the way it is, life is cruel, wasn’t that what you told me? Wanda, I can’t remember}.

**Author's Note:**

> comments are always so encouraging <33


End file.
